 Chapter 6 of Margaret Fuller, Marquesa Ossolly, by Julia Ward Howe. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. William Henry Channing's Portrait of Margaret. Transcendental Days. Brook Farm. Margaret's Visits There. It is now time for us to speak of the portrait of Margaret, drawn by the hand of William Henry Channing, and first give us leave to say that Mr. Emerson's very valueless valuable statements concerning her are to be prized rather for their critical and literary appreciation than accepted as showing the insight given by strong personal sympathy. While bound to each other by mutual esteem and admiration, Margaret and Mr. Emerson were opposites in natural tendency, if not in character. While Mr. Emerson never appeared to be modified by any change of circumstance, never melted nor took fire, but was always and everywhere himself, the soul of Margaret was subject to a glowing passion which raised the temperature of the social atmosphere around her. Was this atmosphere heavy with human dullness? Margaret so smote the ponderous demon with her fiery wand that he was presently compelled to caper nimbly for her amusement, or to flee from her presence. Was sorrow master of the situation? Of this tyranny Margaret was equally intolerant. The mourner must be uplifted through her to new hope and joy. Frivolity in all unworthiness had reason to fear her, for she denounced them to the face with sonnambulic unconcern. But where high joys were in the ascendant there stood Margaret, quick with her inner interpretation adding to human rapture itself the deep, calming lessening of divine reason. A priestess of life glories she magnified her office and in its grandeur sometimes grew grand eloquent, but with all this her sense was solid and her meaning clear and worthy. Mr. Emerson had also a priesthood, but of a different order. The calm, severe judgment, the unpardoning taste, the deliberation which not only preceded but also followed his utterances, carried him to a remoteness from the common life of common people, and allowed no intermingling of this life with his own. For him, too, came a time of fusion which vindicated his interest in the great issues of his time. But this was not in Margaret's day, and to her he seemed the palm tree in the desert, graceful and admirable, bearing aloft a waving crest, but spreading no sheltering and embracing branches. William Henry Channing, whose reminiscences of Margaret stand last in order in the memoirs already published, was more nearly allied to her in character than either of his co-agitors. If Mr. Emerson's bane was a want of fusion, the ruling characteristic of Mr. Channing was a heart that melted almost too easily at the touch of human sympathy, and whose heat and glow of feeling may sometimes have over-swept the calmer power of judgment. He had heard of Margaret in her school days as a prodigy of talent and attainment. During the period of his own studies in Cambridge he first made her acquaintance. He was struck but not attracted by her saucy sprightliness. Her intensity of temperament, unmeasured satire, and commanding air were indeed somewhat repellent to him, and almost led him to conjecture that she had chosen for her part in life the role of a Yankee Corrine. Her friendships too seemed to him extravagant. He dreaded the encounter of a personality so imperious and uncompromising in its demands, and was content to observe her at a safe and respectful distance. Soon, however, through the shining fog of brilliant wit and sentiment, the real nobility of her nature made itself seen and felt. He found her sagacious in her judgments. Her conversation showed breadth of culture and depth of thought. Above all, he was made to feel her great sincerity of purpose. This it was, says he, that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretense so quick and stern. The loftiness of her ideal explained the severity of her judgments, and the heroic mold and impulse of her character had much to do with her stately deportment. Thus the salient points which, at a distance, had seemed to him defects, were found on a nearer view to be the indications of qualities most rare and admirable. James Freeman Clark, an intimate of both parties, made them better known to each other by his cordial interpretation of each to each. But it was in the year 1839, in the days of Margaret's residence at Jamaica Plain, that the friendship between these two eminent persons, long before rooted, grew up, and leafed, and blossomed. Mr. Channing traces the beginning of this nearer relation to a certain day on which he sought Margaret amid these new surroundings. It was a bright summer day. The windows of Margaret's parlor commanded a pleasant view of meadows, with hills beyond. She entered, bearing a vase of freshly gathered flowers, her own tribute just levied from the garden. Of these, and of their significance, was her first speech. From these she passed to the engravings which adorned her walls, and to much talk of art and artists. This theme, an easy transition, led the conversation to Greece and its mythology. A little later Margaret began to speak of the friends whose care had surrounded her with these objects of her delighting contemplation. The intended marriage of two of the best beloved among these friends was much in her mind at the moment, and Mr. Channing compares the gradation of thought by which she arrived at the announcement of this piece of intelligence to the progress and denouement of a drama, so eloquent and artistic did it appear to him. A ramble in Bussey's Woods followed this indoor interview. In his account of it, Mr. Channing has given us not only a record of much that Margaret said, but also a picture of how she looked on that ever-remembered day. Reaching a moss-cushioned ledge near the summit, she seated herself. As leaning on one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, turning now and then her eyes full upon me, to see whether I caught her meaning. There was leisure to study her thoroughly. Her temperament was predominantly what the physiologists would call nervous sanguine, and the gray eye, rich brown hair, and light complexion with the muscular and well-developed frame bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor. Here was a sensitive yet powerful being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort. She certainly had not beauty, yet the high-arched dome of the head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dignity and impulse gave her a commanding charm. Mr. Channing mentions, as others do, Margaret's habit of shutting her eyes and opening them suddenly, with a singular dilation of the iris. He dwells still more upon the pliancy of her neck, the expression of which varied with her mood of mind. In moments of tender or pensive feeling its curves were like those of a swan. Under the influence of indignation its movements were more like the swoopings of a bird of prey. Finally, in the animation yet abandoned of Margaret's attitude and look, were rarely blended the fiery force of northern and the soft langer of southern races. Until this day Mr. Channing had known Margaret through her intellect only. This conversation of many hours revealed her to him in a new light. It unfolded to him her manifold gifts and deep experience, her great capacity for joy, and the suffering through which she had passed. She should have been an acknowledged queen among the magnates of European culture. She was hedged about by the narrow intolerance of provincial New England. In a more generous soil her genius would have borne fruit of the highest order. She felt this, felt that she had failed of this highest result, and yet was so patient, so faithful to duty, so considerate of all who had claims upon her. Perceiving now the ardour of her nature and the strength of her self-sacrifice, Margaret's new friend could not but bow in reverence before her, and from that time the two always met as intimates. Mr. Channing's reminiscences preserve for us a valuable apercew of the transcendental movement in New England and of Margaret's relation to it. The circle of the transcendentalists was, for the moment, a new church, with the joy and pain of a new evangel in its midst. In the very heart of New England puritanism, at that day hard, dry and thorny, had sprung up a new growth, like the blossoming of a century-plant, beautiful and inconvenient. Boundaries had to be enlarged for it, for if society would not give it room it was determined to go outside of society, and to assert at all hazards the freedom of inspiration. While this movement was, in a good degree, one of simple protest and reaction, it yet drew much of its inspiration from foreign countries and periods of time remote from our own. From the standpoint of the present it looked deeply into the past and into the future. Its leaders studied Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, among the classic authors, and Diveta, Hegel, Kant, and Fichte, among the prophets of modern thought. The Weltgeist of the Germans was its ideal. Method it could not boast. Pre-discussion, abstinence from participation in ordinary social life and religious worship, a restless seeking for sympathy, and a constant formulation of sentiments which, exalted in themselves, seem to lose something of their character by the frequency with which they were presented. These are some of the traits which transcendentalism showed to the uninitiated. To its Greek and Germanic elements was presently added an influence borrowed from the systematic genius of France. The works of Fourier became a gospel of hope to those who looked for a speedy regeneration of society. George Ripley, an eminent scholar and critic, determined to embody this hope in a grand experiment and bravely organized the Brookfarm community upon a plan as nearly in accordance with the principles laid down by Fourier as circumstances would allow. He was accompanied in this new departure by a little band of fellow workers, of whom one or two were already well known as literary men, while others of them have since attained distinction in various walks of life. While all the transcendentalists were not associationists, the family at Brookfarm was yet considered as an outcome of the new movement, and as such was regarded by its promoters with great sympathy and interest. Margaret's position among the transcendentalists may easily be imagined. In such a group of awakened thinkers her place was soon determined. At their frequent reunions she was a most welcome and honored guest. More than this, among those who claimed a fresh outpouring of the spirit, Margaret was recognized as a bearer of the living word. She was not in haste to speak on these occasions, but seemed for a time absorbed in listening and in observation. When the moment came she showed the result of this attention by briefly restating the points already touched upon, passing thence to the unfolding of her own views. This she seems always to have done with much force, and a grace no less remarkable. She spoke slowly at first, with the deliberation inseparable from weight of thought. As she proceeded, images and illustrations suggested themselves to her mind in rapid succession. The sweep of her speech became grand, says Mr. Channing. Her eloquence was direct and vigorous. Her wide range of readings supplied her with ready and copious illustrations. The commonplace became original from her way of treating it. She had power to analyze, power to sum up. Her use of language had a rhythmic charm. She was sometimes grand eloquent, sometimes excessive in her denunciation of popular evils and abuses, but her sincerity of purpose, her grasp of thought and keenness of apprehension, were felt throughout. The source of these and similar sibiline manifestations is a subtle one. Such a speaker, consciously or unconsciously, draws much of her inspiration from the minds of those around her. Each of these in a measure affects her, while she still remains mistress of herself. Her thought is upheld by the general sympathy, which she suddenly lifts to a height undreamed of before. She divines what each most purely wishes, most deeply hopes, and so her words reveal to those present not only their own unuttered thoughts, but also the higher significance and completeness which she is able to give these thoughts under the seal of her own conviction. These fleeting utterances, alas, are lost, like the leaves swept of old from the Sibyl's Cave. But as souls are, after all, the most permanent facts that we know of, who shall say that one breath of them is wasted? Young hearts today, separated from the time we speak of by two or three generations, may still keep the generous thrill which Margaret awakened in the bosom of a grandmother, herself then in the bloom of youth. Books indeed are laid away and forgotten. Manuscripts are lost or destroyed. The spoken word, fleeting though it may be, may kindle a flame that ages shall not quench but only brighten. While therefore it may grieve us today that we cannot know exactly what Margaret said nor how she said it, we may believe that the inspiration which she felt and communicated to others remains, not the less, a permanent value in the community. Having already somewhat the position of a come outer, Margaret was naturally supposed to be an entire sympathy with the transcendentalists. This supposition was strengthened by her assuming the editorship of the dial, and Christopher Cranch, in caricaturing it, represented her as a Minerva, driving a team of the new Illuminati. Margaret's journals and letters, however, show that, while she welcomed the new outlook towards a possible perfection, she did not accept without reserve the enthousiasms of those about her. The good time coming, which seemed to them so near, appeared to her very distant and difficult of attainment. Her views at the outset are aptly expressed in the following extract from one of her letters. In Utopia it is impossible to build up. At least my hopes for our race on this one planet are more limited than those of most of my friends. I accept the limitations of human nature, and believe a wise acknowledgment of them one of the best conditions of progress. Yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifestation, prophecies to man his eventual destiny. And were not man ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify he would remain torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is called the transcendental party, and that I feel their aim to be the true one. The grievance maintained against society by the new school of thought was of a nature to make the respondents say, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced. We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept. The status of New England, social and political, was founded upon liberal traditions. Yet these friends placed themselves in opposition to the whole existing order of things. The Unitarian discipline had delivered them from the yoke of doctrines impossible to an age of critical culture. They reproached it with having taken away the mystical ideas which, in imaginative minds, had made the poetry of the old faith. Margaret, writing of these things in 1840, well says, Since the revolution there has been little in the circumstances of this country to call out the higher sentiments, the effect of continued prosperity is the same on nations as on individuals. It leaves the nobler faculties undeveloped. The superficial diffusion of knowledge, unless attended by a deepening of its sources, is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the thought of a nation. The tendency of circumstances has been to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally. So much for the careless crowd. In another sentence, Margaret gives us the clue to much of the divine discontent felt by deeper thinkers. She says, How much those of us who have been formed by the European mind have to unlearn and lay aside, if we would act here. The scholars of New England had indeed so devoted themselves to the study of foreign literatures as to be little familiar with the spirit and the needs of their own country. The England of the English Classics, the Germany of the German poets and philosophers, the Italy of the Renaissance writers and artists, combined to make the continent in which their thoughts were at home. The England of the commonality, the Germany and Italy of the peasant and artisan, were little known to them, and as little the characteristic qualities and defects of their own country people. Hence their comparison of the old society with the new was in great part founded upon what we may call literary illusions. Moreover the German and English methods of thoughts were only partially applicable to a mode of life whose conditions far transcended those of European life in their freedom and in the objects recognized as common to all. Those of us who have numbered three score years can remember the perpetual lamentation of the cultivated American of forty years ago. His whole talk was a cataloging of negatives. We have not this, we have not that. To all of which the true answer would have been, You have a wonderful country, an exceptional race, an unparalleled opportunity. You have not yet made your five talents ten. This is what you should set about immediately. The Brook Farm experiment probably appeared to Margaret in the light of a utopia. Her regard for the founders of the enterprise induced her, nevertheless, to visit the place frequently. Of the first of these visits her journal has preserved a full account. The aspect of the new settlement at first appeared to her somewhat desolate. You seem to belong to nobody, to have a right to speak to nobody, but very soon you learn to take care of yourself, and then the freedom of the place is delightful. The society of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley was most congenial to her, and the nearness of the woods afforded an opportunity for the rambles in which she delighted, but her time was not all dedicated to these calm pleasures. Soon she had won the confidence of several of the inmates of the place, who imparted to her their hard histories, seeking that aid and counsel which she was so well able to give. She mentions the holding of two conversations during this visit, in both of which she was the leader. The first was on education, a subject concerning which her ideas differed from those adopted by the community. The manners of some of those present were too free and easy to be agreeable to Margaret, who was accustomed to deference. At the second conversation, some days later, the circle was smaller, and no one showed any sign of weariness or indifference. The subject was impulse, chosen by Margaret because she observed among her new friends a great tendency to advocate spontaneousness at the expense of reflection. Of her own part in this exercise, she says, I defended nature, as I always do. The spirit ascending through, not superseding, nature. But in the scale of sense, intellect, spirit, I advocated to-night the claims of intellect, because those present were rather disposed to postpone them. After the lapse of a year she found the tone of the society much improved. The mere freakishness of unrestraint had yielded to a recognition of the true conditions of liberty, and tolerance was combined with sincerity. CHAPTER VII Among Margaret's life-long characteristics was a genuine love of little children, which sprang from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness of childhood. When she visited the homes of her friends, the little ones of their households were taken into the circle of her loving attention. Three of them became so especially dear to her that she called them her children. These were Waldo Emerson, Picky Greeley, and Herman Clark. For each of them the span of earthly life was short. No one of them living to pass out of childhood. Waldo was the eldest son of Mr. Emerson, the child deeply mourned and commemorated by him in the well-known Threnody. The hyacinthine boy for whom, mourn might well break in April bloom, the gracious boy who did adorn the world wherein to he was born, and by his countenance repay the favour of the loving day, has disappeared from the day's eye. This death occurred in 1841. Margaret visited Concord soon afterward, and has left in her journals a brief record of this visit, in which she made the grief of her friends her own. We gather from its first phrase that Mr. Emerson, whom she now speaks of as Waldo, had wished her to commit to writing some of her reminiscences of the dear one lately departed. Waldo brought me at once the incorn and pen. I told him if he kept me so strictly to my promise I might lose my ardour. However, I began at once to write for him, but not with much success. Lydian came in to see me before dinner. She wept for the lost child, and I was tempted to do the same, which relieved much from the oppression I have felt since I came. Waldo showed me all he and others had written about the child. There is very little from Waldo's own observation, though he was with him so much. He has not much eye for the little signs in children that have such great leadings. The little there is, is good. Mama, may I have this little bell which I have been making to stand by the side of my bed? Yes, it may stand there. But, Mama, I'm afraid it will alarm you. It may sound in the middle of the night, and it will be heard over the whole town. It will sound like some great glass thing which will fall down and break all to pieces. It will be louder than a thousand hawks. It will be heard across the water and in all the countries. It will be heard all over the world. I like this, because it was exactly so he talked, spinning away without end and with large beautiful earnest eyes. But most of the stories are of short sayings. This is good in M. Russell's journal of him. She had been telling him a story that excited him, and then he told her this, how his horse went out into a long, long wood, and how he looked through a squirrel's eyes and saw a great giant, and the giant was himself. Went to see the Hawthorns. It was very pleasant. The poplars whisper so suddenly their pleasant tale, and everywhere the view is so peaceful. The house within I like. All their things are so expressive of themselves, and mix in so gracefully with the old furniture. H. walked home with me. We stopped some time to look at the moon. She was struggling with clouds. He said he should be much more willing to die than two months ago, for he had had some real possession in life. But still he never wished to leave this earth. It was beautiful enough. He expressed as he always does many fine perceptions. I like to hear the lightest thing he says. Waldo and I have good meetings, though we stop at all our old places. But my expectations are moderate now. It is his beautiful presence that I prize, far more than our intercourse. He has been reading me his new poems, and the other day at the end he asked me how I liked the little subjective twinkle all through. Saturday. Dear Richard has been here a day or two, and his common sense and homely affection are grateful after these fine people with whom I live at swords points, though for the present turn downwards. It is well to thee and thou it after talking with angels and geniuses. Richard and I spent the afternoon at Walden, and got a great bunch of flowers. A fine thundershower gloomed gradually up and turned the lake inky-black, but no rain came till sunset. Sunday. A heavy rain. I must stay at home. I feel sad. Mrs. Ripley was here, but I only saw her a while in the afternoon and spent the day in my room. Sunday I do not give to my duty-riding, no indeed. I finished yesterday, after a rest, the article on ballads. Though a patchwork thing, it has craved time to do it. We come now to the period of the famous conversations, in which, more fully than in ought else, Margaret may be said to have delivered her message to the women of her time. The novelty of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may be imagined, and also the division of opinion concerning it in those social circles which considered themselves as charged with the guardianship of the taste of the community. Margaret's attitude in view of this undertaking appears to have been a modest and sensible one. She found herself in the first place under the necessity of earning money for her own support and in aid of her family. Her greatest gift, as she well knew, was in conversation. Her rare eloquence did not much avail her at her desk, and though all that she wrote had the value of thought and of study, it was in living speech alone that her genius made itself entirely felt and appreciated. What more natural than that she should have proposed to make this rare gift available for herself and others. The reasons which she herself gives for undertaking the experiment are so solid and sufficient as to make us blush retrospectively for the merriment in which the thoughtless world sometimes indulged concerning her. Her wish was to pass and review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavour to place them in due relation to one another in our minds, to systematize thought, and to give a precision and clearness in which our sexes are so deficient, chiefly I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive. In fine, she hoped to be able to throw some light upon the momentous questions. What were we born to do, and how shall we do it? In looking forward to this effort she saw one possible obstacle in that sort of vanity which wears the garb of modesty, in which she thinks may make some women fear to lay aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art of coterie criticism, and the delicate disdains of good society, even to obtain a nearer view of truth itself. Yet, she says, as without such generous courage nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many capable of it. The twofold impression which Margaret made is to be remarked in this matter of the conversations as elsewhere. Without the fold of her admirers stood carping unkind critics. Women were enthusiastic and grateful friends. The first meeting of Margaret's conversation class was held at Miss Peabody's rooms in West Street, Boston, on the 6th of November, 1839. Twenty-five ladies were present, who showed themselves to be of the elect by their own election of a noble aim. These were all ladies of superior position, gathered by a common interest from very various belongings of creed and persuasion. At this, their first coming together, Margaret prefaced her program by some remarks on the deficiencies in the education given to women. Defects which she thought that later study, aided by the stimulus of mutual endeavor and interchange of thought, might do much to remedy. Her opening remarks are as instructive today as they were when she uttered them. Women are now taught at school all that men are. They run over, superficially, even more studies, without really being taught anything. But with this difference, men are called on from a very early period to reproduce all that they learn. Their college exercises, their political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes of display. It is to supply this defect that these conversations have been planned. Margaret had chosen the Greek mythology for the subject of her first conversations. Her reasons for this selection are worth remembering. It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is serious, without being solemn, and without excluding any mode of intellectual action. It is playful as well as deep. It is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the cultivation of a nation. It is also generally known and associated with all our ideas of the arts. In considering this statement, it is not difficult for us at this day to read, as people say, between the lines. The religious world of Margaret's youth was agitated by oppositions which rent asunder the heart of Christendom. Margaret wished to lead her pupils beyond all discord into the high and happy unity. Her own nature was both fervent and religious, but she could not accept intolerance either in belief or in disbelief. To study with her friends the ethics of an ancient faith, too remote to become the occasion of personal excitement, seemed to her a step in the direction of freer thought and a more unbiased criticism. The Greek mythology, instinct with the genius of a wonderful people, afforded her the desired theme. With its help she would introduce her pupils to a sphere of serenest contemplation in which religion and beauty had become wedded through immortal types. Margaret was not able to do this without awakening some orthodox suspicion. This she knew how to allay, for when one of the class demurred at the supposition that a Christian nation could have anything to envy in the religion of a heathen one, Margaret said that she had no desire to go back and believed we have the elements of a deeper civilization, yet the Christian was in its infancy, the Greek in its maturity, nor could she look on the expression of a great nation's intellect as insignificant. These fables of the gods were the result of the universal sentiments of religion, aspiration, intellectual action, of a people whose political and aesthetic life had become immortal. Margaret's good hopes were justified by the success of her undertaking. The value of what she had to impart was felt by her class from the first. It was not received in a passive and compliant manner but with the earnest questioning which she had wished to awaken and which she was so well able both to promote and to satisfy. In the first of her conversations ten of the twenty-five persons present took part and this number continued to increase in later meetings. Some of these ladies had been bred in the way of liberal thought. Some held fast to the formal limits of the old theology. The extremes of bigotry and skepticism were probably not underrepresented among them. From these differences and dissidences Margaret was able to combine the elements of a wider agreement. A common ground of interest was found in the range of topics presented by her and in her manner of presenting them. The enlargement of a new sympathy was made to modify the intense and narrow interests in which women as a class are apt to abide. Margaret's journal and letters to friends give some accounts of the first meetings. She finds her circle from the start devoutly thoughtful and feels herself not a paid Corrine but a teacher and a guide. The bright minds respond to her appeal as half kindle coals glow beneath a strong and sudden breath. The present, always arid if exclusively dwelt in, is enriched by the treasures of the past and animated by the great hopes of the future. Reports from some of Margaret's hearers show us how she appeared to them. All was said with the most captivating address in grace and with beautiful modesty. The position in which she placed herself with respect to the rest was entirely ladylike and companionable. Another writer finds in the séance the charm of a platonic dialogue without pretension or pedantry. Margaret in her chair of leadership appeared positively beautiful in her intelligent enthusiasm. Even her dress was glorified by this influence and is spoken of as although it is known to have been characterized by no display or attempted effect. In Margaret's plan the personages of the Greek Olympus were considered as types of various aspects of human character. Prometheus became the embodiment of pure reason. Jupiter stood for active, Juno for passive will, the one representing insistence, the other resistance. In Nerva pictured the practical power of the intellect, Apollo became the symbol of genius, Bacchus that of geniality, Venus was instinctive womanhood and also a type of the beautiful to the consideration of which four conversations were devoted. In a fifth Margaret related the story of Cupid and Psyche in a manner which indelibly impressed itself upon the minds of her hearers. Other conversations presented Neptune as circumstance, Pluto as the abyss of the undeveloped, Pan as the glow and play of nature, etc. Thus in picturesque guise the great questions of life and of character were passed in review. A fresh and fearless analysis of human conditions showed as a discovery the grandeur and beauty of man's spiritual inheritance. All were cheered and uplifted by this new outlook, sharing for the time and perhaps thenceforth what Mr. Emerson calls the steady elevation of Margaret's aim. These occasions, so highly prized and enjoyed, sometimes brought to Margaret their penalty in the shape of severe nervous headache. During one of these attacks a friend expressed anxiety, lest she should continue to suffer in this way. Margaret replied, I feel just now a separation from pain and illness, such a consciousness of true life while suffering most, that pain has no effect but to steal some of my time. In accordance with the urgent desire of the class the conversations were renewed at the beginning of the following winter. Margaret having in the meantime profited by a season of a special retirement which was not without influence upon her plan of thought and of life. From this interval of religious contemplation she returned to her labours with the feeling of a new power. In opening the first meeting of this second series, on November 22, 1840, Margaret spoke of great changes which had taken place in her way of thinking. These were of so deep and sacred a character that she could only give them a partial expression, which, however, sufficed to touch her hearers deeply. They all, with glistening eyes, seemed melted into one love. Hearts were kindled by her utterance to one enthusiasm of sympathy which set out of sight the possibility of future estrangement. In the conversations of this winter, 1840 to 41, the fine arts held a prominent place. Margaret stated at the beginning that the poetry of life would be found in the advance from objects to law, from the circumference of being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to the center. This poetry was the only path of the true soul, life's prose being the deviation from this ideal way. The fine arts she considered a compensation for this prose, which appeared to her inevitable. The beauties which life could not embody might be expressed in stone, upon canvas, or in music and verse. She did not permit the search for the beautiful to transcend the limits of our social and personal duties. The pursuit of aesthetic pleasure might lead us to fail in attaining the higher beauty. A poetic life was not the life of a dilettante. Of sculpture and music she had much to say, placing them above all other arts. Painting appeared to her inferior to sculpture, because it represented a greater variety of objects, and thus involved more prose. Several conversations were nevertheless devoted to painting, and the conclusion was reached that color was consecrate to passion, and sculpture to thought, while yet in some sculptures, like the Niobe, for example, feeling was recognized but on a grand, universal scale. The question, what is life, occupied one meeting, and brought out many differences of view, which Margaret at last took up into a higher ground, beginning with God as the eternally loving and creating life, and recognizing in human nature a kindred power of love and of creation, through the exercise of which we also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and, leaving behind us ignorance and sin, become godlike in the ability to give as well as to receive happiness. With the work of this winter was combined a series of evening meetings, five in number, to which gentlemen were admitted. Mr. Emerson was present at the second of these, and reports it as having been somewhat encumbered by the headiness or incapacity of the man, who, as he observes, had not been trained in Margaret's method. Another chronicler, for whose truth Mr. Emerson vouches, speaks of the plan of these five evenings as a very noble one. They were spoken of as evenings of mythology, and Margaret, in devising them, had relied upon the more thorough classical education of the gentlemen to supplement her own knowledge, acquired in a less systematic way. In this hope she was disappointed. The newcomers did not bring with them an erudition equal to hers, nor yet any helpful suggestion of ideas. The friend whom we now quote is so much impressed by Margaret's power as to say, I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her. Even Mr. Emerson served only to display her powers, his uncompromising idealism seeming narrow and hard when contrasted with her glowing realism. She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion as Mr. Emerson does, but by comprehension, and so no poorest, saddest spirit, but she will lead to hope and faith. Margaret's classes continued through six winters. The number of those present varied from twenty-five to thirty. In eighteen forty-one through forty-two the general subject was ethics under which had the family, the school, the church, society, and literature were all discussed, and with a special reference to the influences on women. In the winter next after this we have notes of the following topics. Is the ideal first or last, divination or experience? Persons who never awake to life in this world. Ethics, faith, creeds, woman, demonology, influence, Roman Catholicism, the ideal. In the season of eighteen forty-three forty-four a number of themes were considered under the general head of education. Among these were culture, ignorance, vanity, prudence, and patience. These happy labours came to an end in April of the year eighteen forty-four when Margaret parted from her class with many tokens of their love and gratitude. After speaking of affectionate words, beautiful gifts, and rare flowers, she says, How noble has been my experience of such relations now for six years and with so many and so various minds. Life is worth living, is it not? Margaret had answered Mr. Malick's question before it was asked. Margaret's summer on the lakes was the summer of eighteen forty-three. Her first records of it date from Niagara, and give her impressions of the wonderful scene in which the rapids impressed her more than the cataract itself, whether seen from the American or from the Canadian side. Slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to the Indian Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling rushing rapids and heard their everlasting roar my emotions overpowered me. A choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, my blood ran rippling to my fingers' ends. This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me. At Buffalo she embarked for a voyage on Lake Erie. Making a brief stop at Cleveland the steamer passed on to the St. Clair River. The sight of an encampment of Indians on its banks gave Margaret her first feeling of what was then the West. The people in the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had brought with them their cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow doctrinal way on these free waters. But that will soon cease. There is no time for this clash of opinions in the West, where the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine. The following passage will show us the spirit which Margaret carried into these new scenes. I came to the West, prepared for the distaste I must experience at its mushroom growth. I know that where go-ahead is the motto, the village cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives and the gradations of experience involuntarily give. The march of peaceful is scarcely less wanton than that of war-like invention. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land for a season bears none except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or defame. On the contrary, I trust by reverent faith to woo the mighty meaning of the scene. Perhaps to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos. Charles Dickens's American notes may have been in Margaret's mind when she penned these lines, and this faith in her may have been quickened by the perusal of the pages in which he showed, mostly, how not to see a new country. Reaching Chicago, she had her first glimpse of the prairie, which at first only suggested to her the very desolation of dullness. After sweeping over the vast monotony of the lakes, to come to this monotony of land, with all around a limitless horizon, to walk and walk but never climb, how the eye greeted the approach of a sail or the smoke of a steamboat, it seemed that anything so animated must come from a better land where mountains give religion to the scene. But after I had ridden out and seen the flowers, and observed the sun set, with that calmness seen only in the prairies, and the cattle winding slowly to their homes in the island groves, most peaceful of sights, I began to love, because I began to know the scene, and shrank no longer from the encircling vastness. Here followed an excursion of three weeks, in a strong wagon drawn by a stalwart pair of horses, and supplied with all that could be needed, as the journey was through Rock River Valley, beyond the regions of trade and martyr. Margaret speaks of a guide equally admirable as Marshall and companion. This was none other than a younger brother of James Freeman Clark, William Hull Clark by name, a man who then and thereafter made Chicago his home, and who lived and died an honored and respected citizen. This journey with Margaret, in which his own sister was of the party, always remained one of the poetic recollections of his early life. He had suffered much from untoward circumstances, and was beginning to lose the elasticity of youth under the burden of his discouragements. Margaret's sympathy divined the depth and delicacy of William Clark's character, and her unconquerable spirit lifted him from the abyss of despondency into a cheerfulness and courage which nevermore foresook him. Returning to Chicago, Margaret once more embarked for lake travel, and her next chapter describes Wisconsin, at that time a territory not yet a state, still nearer the acorn than we were. Milwaukee was then a small town, promising, as she says, to be some time a fine one. The yellow brick of which she found it mostly built pleased her, as it has pleased the world since. No railroads with mysterious initials served, in those days, the needs of that vast region. The steamer, arriving once in twenty-four hours, brought males and travelers, and a little stir of novelty and excitement. Going a day's journey into the adjacent country, Margaret and her companions found such accommodations as is here mentioned. The little log cabin where we slept, with its flower garden in front, disturbed the scene no more than a lock upon a fair cheek. The hospitality of that house I may well call princely. It was the boundless hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a palace for the guest, does him still greater service by the freedom of its bounty to the very last drop of its powers. In the western immigration Milwaukee was already a station of importance. Here on the pier I see disembarking the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old legendary lore, of modern wonder they have already planted amid the Wisconsin forests. And their tales of the origin of things, and the providence that rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian that the very oak tree will not know them apart, will not know whether itself be a runic, a druid, or a Winnebago oak. Margaret reached the island of Mackinac late in August, and founded occupied by a large representation from the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes, who came there to receive their yearly penchant from the government at Washington. Arriving at night the steamer fired some rockets, and Margaret heard with a sinking heart the wild cries of the excited Indians, and the pants and snorts of the departing steamer. She walked with a stranger to a strange hotel, her late companions having gone on with the boat. She found such rest as she could in the room which served at once as sitting and as dining-room. The early morning revealed to her the beauties of the spot, and with these the features of her new neighbors. With the first rosy streak I was out among my Indian neighbors, whose lodges honeycombed the beautiful beach. They were already on the alert, the children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge, the women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on their pipes. I had been much amused when the strain proper to the Winnebago courting-flute was played to me on another instrument, at any one's fan-scene, at a melody. But now, when I heard the notes in their true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison with the sweetest bird-song. And this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate. The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no more thinks of playing the flute than one of the settled-down members of our society would, of choosing the purple light of love as dye-stuff for a sur-too. Of the island itself, Margaret writes, it was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these wild forms adorned it as looking so at home in it. The Indian encampment was constantly enlarged by new arrivals, which Margaret watched from the window of her boarding-house. I was never tired of seeing the canoes come in, and the new arrivals set up their temporary dwellings. The women ran to set up the tent-polls and spread the mats on the ground. The men brought the chests, kettles, and so on. The mats were then laid on the outside, the cedar-bowls strewed on the ground, the blanket hung up for a door, and all was completed in less than twenty minutes. They then began to prepare the night-meal, and to learn of their neighbours the news of the day. In these days, in which a spasm of conscience touches the American heart with a sense of the wrongs done to the Indian, Margaret's impressions concerning our aborigines acquire a fresh interest of value. She found them in occupation of many places from which they have since been driven by what is called the March of Civilization. We may rather call it a barbarism better armed and informed than their own. She also found among their white neighbours the instinctive dislike and repulsion which are familiar to us. Here in Mackinaw Margaret could not consort with them without drawing upon herself the censure of her white acquaintances. Indeed, I wonder why they did not give me up, as they certainly looked upon me with great distaste for it. Get you gone, you Indian dog, was the felt if not the breathed expression towards the hapless owners of the soil. All their claims, all their sorrows, quite forgot in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices the whites have taught them. Missionary zeal seems to have been at a standstill just at this time, and the hopelessness of converting those heathen to Christianity was held to excuse further effort to that end. Margaret says, Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence, have been civilized and made a valuable ingredient in the new state, I will not say. But this we are sure of. The French Catholics did not harm them, did not disturb their minds merely to corrupt them. The French they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle in the college, with their niggered conceptions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experiment. Margaret naturally felt in a special interest in observing the character and condition of the Indian women. She says, truly enough, the observations of women upon the position of women are always more valuable than those of men. Unhappily this is a theme in regard to which many women make no observation of their own, and only repeat what they have heard from men. But if Margaret's impressions a few sentences will give us some idea. With the women I held much communication by signs. They are almost invariably coarse and ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with a peculiarly awkward gait, and forms bent by burdens. This gait, so different from the steady and noble step of the men, marks the inferior position they occupy. Margaret quotes from Mrs. Schoolcraft and from Mrs. Grant passages which assert that this inferiority does not run through the whole life of an Indian woman, and that the drudgery and weary service imposed upon them by the men are compensated by the esteem and honor in which they are held. Still, she says, notwithstanding the homage paid to women and the consequence allowed them in some cases, it is impossible to look upon the Indian women without feeling that they do occupy a lower place than women among the nations of European civilization. Their decorum and delicacy are striking, and show that, where these are native to the mind, no habits of life make any difference. Their whole gesture is timid yet self-possessed. They used to crowd round me to inspect little things I had to show them, but never press near. On the contrary, would reprove and keep off the children. Anything they took from my hand was held with care, then shut or folded, and returned with an air of ladylike precision. And of the aspect of the Indian question in her day, Margaret writes, I have no hope of liberalizing the missionary, of humanizing the sharks of trade, of infusing the conscientious drop into the flinty bosom of policy, of saving the Indian from immediate degradation and speedy death. Yet let every man look to himself how far this blood shall be required at his hands. Let the missionary, instead of preaching to the Indian, preach to the traitor who ruins him, of the dreadful account which will be demanded of the followers of Cain. Let every legislator take the subject to heart, and if he cannot undo the effects of past sin, try for that clear view and right sense that may save us from sinning still more deeply. Margaret's days in Mackinaw were nine in number. She went thence by steamer to the Sault Ste. Marie. On the way thither, the steamer being detained by a fog, its captain took her in a small boat to visit the island of St. Joseph, and on it the remains of an old English fort. Her comments upon this visit, in itself of little interest, are worth quoting. The captain, though he had been on this trip hundreds of times, had never seen this spot, and never would but for this fog and his desire to entertain me, he presented a striking instance how men, for the sake of getting a living, forget to live. This is a common fault among the active men, the truly living, who could tell what life is. It should not be so. Literature should not be left to the mere literati, eloquence to the mere orator. Every Caesar should be able to write his own commentary. We want a more equal, more thorough, more harmonious development, and there is nothing to hinder the men of this country from it except their own supineness or sordid views. At the sous, Margaret found many natural beauties and enjoyed, among other things, the descent of the rapids in a canoe. Returning to Mackinac she was joined by her friends, and as further chronicled only her safe return to Buffalo. The book which preserves the record of this journey saw the light at the end of the next year's summer. It ends it with a little envoy to the reader, but for us the best envoy will be her own description of the last days of its composition. Every day I rose and attended to the many little calls which are always on me, and which have been more of late. Then about eleven I would sit down to write at my window, close to which is the apple-tree, lately full of blossoms and now of yellow birds. At me was Del Sarto's Madonna, behind me Silinus, holding in his arms the infant pan. I felt very content with my pen, my daily bouquet, and my yellow birds. About five I would go out and walk till dark. Then would arrive my proofs, like crabbed old guardians coming to tea every night. So passed each day. The twenty-third of May, my birthday, about one o'clock, I wrote the last line of my little book. Then I went to Mount Auburn, and walked gently among the graves. And here ends what we have to say about Margaret's New England life. From its close shelter and intense relations she was now to pass into scenes more varied and labours of a more general scope. She had become cruelly worn by her fatigues in teaching and in writing, and in the year 1844 was induced by liberal offers to accept a permanent position on the staff of the New York Tribune, then in the hands of Messiers Greeley and McElrath. This step involved the breaking of home ties, and the dispersion of the household which Margaret had done so much to sustain and to keep together. Margaret's brothers had now left college, and had be taken themselves to the pursuits chosen as their life work. Her younger sister was married, and it was decided that her mother should divide her time among these members of her family, leaving Margaret free to begin a new season of work under circumstances which promised her greater freedom from care and from the necessity of unremitting exertion. CHAPTER VII When Margaret stepped for the last time across the threshold of her mother's home, she must have had the rare comfort of knowing that she had done everything in her power to promote the highest welfare of those who, with her, had shared at shelter. The children of the household had grown up under her fostering care, nor had she, in any flight of her vivid imagination, forgotten the claims and needs of brothers, sister, or mother. So closely indeed had she felt herself bound by the necessity of doing what was best for each and all, that her literary work had not in any degree corresponded to her own desires. Her written and spoken word had indeed carried with it a quickening power for good, but she had not been able so much as to plan one of the greater works which she considered herself bound to produce, and which could neither have been conceived nor carried out without ample command of time and necessary conditions. In a letter written to one of her brothers at this time, Margaret says, If our family affairs could now be so arranged that I might be tolerably tranquil for the next six or eight years, I should go out of life better satisfied with the page I have turned in it than I shall if I must still toil on. A noble career is yet before me, if I can be unimpeded by cares. I have given almost all my young energies to personal relations, but at present I feel inclined to impel the general stream of thought. Let my nearest friends also wish that I should now take share in more public life. The opening now found for Margaret in New York, though fortunate, was by no means fortuitous. She had herself prepared the way thereunto by her good work in the dial. In that cheerless editorial seat she may sometimes, like the lady of Shalat, have sighed to see Sir Lancelot ride careless by, or with the spirit of an unrecognized prophet she may have exclaimed, Who hath believed our report? But her word had found one who could hear it to some purpose. Mr. Greeley had been from the first a reader of this periodical, and had recognized the fresh thought and new culture which gave it character. His attention was first drawn to Margaret by an essay of hers, published in the July number of 1843, and entitled, The Great Law Suit, Man vs. Men, Woman vs. Women. This essay, which at a later date expanded into the volume known as Woman in the Nineteenth Century, struck Mr. Greeley as the production of an original, vigorous, and earnest mind. Margaret's Summer on the Lakes appeared also in the dial somewhat later, and was considered by Mr. Greeley as unequaled, especially in its pictures of the prairies and of the sunnier aspects of Pioneer Life. Convinced of the literary ability of the writer, he gave her to a suggestion of Mrs. Greeley, and, in accordance with her wishes and with his own judgment, extended to her the invitation already spoken of as accepted. This invitation, and the arrangement to which it led, admitted Margaret not only to the columns of the Tribune, but also to the home of its editor, in which she continued to reside during the period of her connection with the paper. This home was a spacious, old-fashioned house on the banks of the East River, completely secluded by the adjacent trees and garden, but with an easy reach of New York by car and omnibus. Margaret came there in December 1844, and was at once struck with the beauty of the scene, and charmed with the aspect of the antiquated dwelling, which had once, no doubt, been the villa of some magnate of old New York. If the outside world of the time troubled itself at all about the Greeley household, it must have considered it in the light of a happy family of eccentrics. Upon the personal peculiarities of Mr. Greeley we need not here enlarge. We were of little account in comparison with the character of the man, who himself deserved the name which he gave to his paper, and was at heart a Tribune of the people. Mrs. Greeley was herself a woman of curious theories, and it is probable that Margaret, in her new surroundings, found herself obliged, in a certain degree, to represent the conventional side of life, which her host and hostess were inclined to disregard. By Mr. Greeley's own account there were differences between Margaret and himself regarding a great variety of subjects, including the use of tea and coffee, which he astewed and to which she adhered, and the emancipation of women, to which Mr. Greeley proposed to attach, as a condition, the abrogation of such small courtesies as are shown the sex today, while Margaret demanded a greater deference as a concomitant of the larger liberty. Mr. Greeley, at first, determined to keep beyond the sphere of Margaret's fascination, and to burn no incense at her shrine. She appeared to him somewhat spoiled by the oriental adoration which she received from other women, themselves persons of character and of culture. Her foibles impressed him as much as did the admirable qualities which he was forced to recognize in her. Vein Resolution Living under the same roof with Margaret, he could not but come to know her, and knowing her, he had no choice but to join the throng of her admirers. To him, as to others, the blemishes at first discerned took on new and brighter aspects in the light of her radiant and lofty soul. I learned, said Mr. Greeley, to know her as a most fearless and unselfish champion of truth and human good, at all hazards, ready to be their standard bearer through danger and obliquy, and if need be, their martyr. Mr. Greeley bears witness also to the fact that this ready spirit of self-sacrifice in Margaret did not spring either from any aestheticism of temperament, or from an undervaluation of material advantages. Margaret, he thinks, appreciated fully all that riches, rank and luxury could give. She prized all of these in their place, but prized far above them all the opportunity to serve and help her fellow-creatures. The imperative drill of press-work was new and somewhat irksome to her. She was accustomed indeed to labor in season and out of season, and in doing so to struggle with bodily pain and weariness. But to take up the pen at the word of command, without the interior bidding of the divine aflatus, was a new necessity, and one to which she found it difficult to submit. Mr. Greeley prized her work highly, though with some drawbacks. He could not always command it at will, for the reason that she could not. He found her writing, however, terse, vigorous, and practical, and considered her contributions to the Tribune more solid in merit, though less ambitious in scope, than her essays written earlier for the dial. She herself esteemed them but moderately, feeling that she had taken up this new work at a time when her tired faculties needed rest and recreation. In a brief memorial of Margaret, Mr. Greeley gives us the titles of the most important of these papers. They are as follows. Thomas Hood, Edgar A. Poe, Capital Punishment, Cassius M. Clay, New Year's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, St. Valentine's, Fourth of July, The First of August, which she commemorates as the anniversary of slave emancipation in the British West Indies. In looking over the volumes which contain these and many others of Margaret's collected papers, we are carried back to a time in which issues now long settled were in the early stages of their agitation, and in which many of those whom we now most revere in memory were living actors on the stage of the century's life. Hawthorne and Longfellow were then young writers. The second series of Mr. Emerson's essay is noticed as of recent publication. At the time of her writing it would seem that Mr. Emerson had a larger circle of readers in England than in his own country. She accounts for this on the ground that, our people, heated by a partisan spirit, necessarily occupied in these first stages by bringing out the material resources of the land, not generally prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that require attention and reflection, are still more injured by a large majority of writers and speakers who lend all their efforts to flatter corrupt tastes and mental indolence. She permits us, however, to hail as an auspicious omen the influence Mr. Emerson has obtained in New England, which she recognizes as deep-rooted, and over the younger part of the community, far greater than that of any other person. She is glad to introduce Robert Browning as the author of Bells and Pomegranates to the American public. Mrs. Browning was then Miss Barrett, in regard of whom Margaret rejoices that her task is mainly to express a cordial admiration, and says that she cannot hesitate to rank her in vigor and nobleness of conception, depth of spiritual experience, and command of classic illusion above any female writer the world has yet known. In those poems of hers which emulate Milton and Dante, her success is far below what we find in the poems of feeling and experience, for she has the vision of a great poet, but little in proportion of his classic power. Barrett has much to say concerning Georges Sond and under various heads. In her work on Woman she gives the rationale of her strange and anomalous appearance, and is at once very just and very tender in her judgments. Georges Sond was then in the full bloom of her reputation. The light and the shade of her character, as known to the public, were at the height of their contrast. To the literary merit of her work was out of the interest of a mysterious personality which rebelled against the limits of sex, and not content to be either man or woman touched with a new and strange protest the imagination of the time. The inexorable progress of events has changed this with so much else. Youth, beauty, sex, all imperial in their day, are discrowned by the dusty hand of time and ranged in the gallery of things that were. Georges Sond's volumes still glow and sparkle on the bookshelf, but Georges Sond's personality and her passions are dim visions of the past and touch us no longer. When Margaret wrote of her, the woman was at the zenith of her power, and the intoxication of her influence was so great that a calm judgment concerning it was difficult. Like a wild Bacchanti she led her chorus of bold spirits through the formal ways of French society, which in her view were bristling with pruriancy and veiled with hypocrisy. Like Margaret's her cry was, Truth at all hazards. But hers was not the ideal truth which Margaret followed so zealously. So vile are men, so weak are women, so ruthless is passion, were the utterances of her sincerity. As of the revels, she did indeed command a new unmasking at the banquet, thoughtless of the risk of profaning innocent imaginations with sad facts which they had no need to know, and which, shown by such a master of art and expression, might bear with them the danger fabled in the mingled beauty and horror of the gorgon's head. Georges Sond was saved by the sincerity of her intention. The Sonambulic utterances had told of her good faith and of her belief in things truly human and divine. Her revolutionary indignation was against the really false and base, and her progress was to a position from which she was able calmly to analyze and loftily to repudiate the disorders in which she was supposed to have lost, for a time, the sustaining power of reason and self-command. To those of us who remember these things in the vividness of their living presence, it is most satisfactory to be assured of the excellence of Margaret's judgment. The great French woman, at the period of which we write, appeared to many the incarnation of all the evil which her sex could represent. To those of opposite mind, she appeared the inspired profitesce of a new era of thought and of sentiment. To Margaret she was neither the one nor the other. Much as she loved genius, that of Georges Sond could not blind her to the faults and falsities that marred her work. Stern idealist, as she was, the most objectionable part of Madame Sond's record, could not move her to a moment's injustice or uncharity in her regard. In Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret says, Georges Sond's smokes, where his male attire, wishes to be addressed as mon frère. Perhaps if she found those who were his brothers indeed, she would not care whether she were brother or sister. And concerning her writings, this author, beginning like many an assault upon bad institutions and external ills, yet deepening the experience through comparative freedom, sees at last that the only efficient remedy must come from individual character. The mind of the age struggles confusedly with these problems. Better discerning as yet, the ill it can no longer bear than the good by which it may supersede it. But women like Sond will speak now and cannot be silenced. Their characters and their eloquence alike foretell an era when such as they shall easier learn to lead true lives. But though such forebode, not such shall be parents of it. Those who would reform the world must show that they do not speak in the heat of wild impulse. Their lives must be unstained by passionate error. They must be religious students of the divine purpose with regard to man, if they would not confound the fancies of a day with the requisitions of eternal good. So much for the woman Sond, as known to Margaret through her works and by hearsay. Of the writer she first knew through her seven strings of the liar, a rhapsodic sketch. Margaret prizes in this the knowledge of the passions and of social institutions with the celestial choice which was above them. In the romances André and Jacques she traces the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law. Though the sophistry of passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to grow upon the dark and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the slew of her past life and began a new existence beneath the sun of a new ideal. The Letters d'Envoyageur seemed to Margaret shallow, the work of a frail woman mourning over her lot. But when Consuelo appears she feels herself strengthened in her first interpretation of Georges Sond's true character and takes her stand upon the original nobleness and love of right which even the wild impulses of her fiery blood were never able entirely to oversweep. Of the work itself, she says, to many women this picture will prove a true Consuelo, Consolation, and we think even very prejudice men will not read it without being charmed with the expansion, sweetness, and genuine force of a female character such as they have not met, but must, when painted, recognize as possible, and may be led to review their opinions and perhaps to elevate and enlarge their hopes as to woman's sphere and woman's mission. CHAPTER IX. We have no very full record of Margaret's life beneath the roof of the Greeley Mansion. The information that we can gather concerning it seems to indicate that it was, on the whole, a period of rest and of enlargement. True, her task-work continued without intermission, and her incitements to exertion were not fewer than in the past, but the change of scene and of occupation gives refreshment, if not repose, to minds of such activity, and Margaret, accustomed to the burden of constant care and anxiety, was now relieved from much of this. She relied much, and was reason, both upon Mr. Greeley's judgment and upon his friendship. The following extract, from a letter to her brother Eugene, gives us an inkling as to her first impressions. The place where we live is old and dilapidated, but in a situation of great natural loveliness. When there I am perfectly secluded, yet every one I wish to see comes to see me, and I can get to the center of the city in half an hour. Here is all affection for me, and desire to make me at home, and I do feel so, which could scarcely have been expected from such an arrangement. My room is delightful. How I wish you could sit at its window with me and see the sales glide by. As to the public part, that is entirely satisfactory. I do just as I please, and as much and as little as I please, and the editors express themselves perfectly satisfied, and others say that my pieces tell, to a degree I could not expect. I think, too, I shall do better and better. I am truly interested in this great field which opens before me, and it is pleasant to be sure of a chance at half a hundred thousand readers. The enlargement spoken of above was found by Margaret in her more varied field of literary action, and in the society of a city which had, even at that date, a cosmopolitan, semi-European character. New York has always, with a little grumbling, conceded to Boston the palm of literary precedence. Despite of this, there has always been a good degree of friendly intercourse among its busy literatures and artists, who find, in the more vivid movement and wider market of a larger city, a compensation, if not an equivalent, for its distance from the recognized centers of intellectual influence. In these circles Margaret was not only a welcome, but a desired guest. In the salons of the time she had the position of a celebrity. Here as elsewhere her twofold magnetism strongly attracted some and repelled others. But hyper-critical and pedantic, she was judged to be by those who observed her at a distance, or heard from her only a chance remark. Such an observer, admiring but not approaching, saw at times the look of the sible flash from beneath Margaret's heavy eyelids, and once, hearing her sigh deeply after a social evening, was moved to ask her why. Alone, as usual, was Margaret's answer, with one or two pathetic words, the remembrance of which brought tears to the eyes of the person to whom they were spoken. In these days she wrote in her journal, There comes a consciousness that I have no real hold on life, no real permanent connection with any soul. I seem a wandering intelligence, driven from spot to spot, that I may learn all secrets, and fulfill a circle of knowledge. This thought envelops me as a cold atmosphere. From this chill isolation of feeling, Margaret was sometimes relieved by the warm appreciation of those whom she had truly found, of whom one could say to her, You come like one of the great powers of nature, harmonizing with all beauty of the solar of the earth. You cannot be discordant with anything that is true or deep. Other neighbors, and of a very different character, had Margaret in her new surroundings. The prisons at Blackwells Island were on the opposite side of the river, at a distance easily reached by boat. Singsing prison was not far off, and Margaret accepted the invitation to pass a Sunday within its walls. She had consorted hitherto with the elite of her sex, the women attracted to her having invariably been of a superior type. She now made acquaintance with the outcasts in whom the elements of womanhood are scarcely recognized. For both she had one gospel, that of high hope and divine love. She seems to have found herself as much at home in the office of encouraging the fallen as she had been when it was her duty to arouse the best spirit in women sheltered from the knowledge and experience of evil by every favoring circumstance. This was in the days in which Judge Edmonds had taken great interest in the affairs of the prison. Mrs. Farnham, a woman of uncommon character and ability, had charge of the female prisoners, who already showed the results of her intelligent and kindly treatment. On the occasion of her first visit Margaret spoke with only a few of the women, and says that, the interview was very pleasant. These women were all from the lowest haunts of vice, yet nothing could have been more decorous than their conduct, while it was also frank. All passed indeed, much as in one of my Boston classes. This last phrase may somewhat startle us, but it should only assure us that Margaret had found, in confronting two circles so widely dissimilar, the happy words which could bring high and low into harmony with the true divine. Margaret's second visit to the prison was on the Christmas soon following. She was invited to address the women in their chapel, and has herself preserved some record of her discourse, which was extemporaneous. Seated at the desk, no longer with the critical air which repelled the timid, but deeply penetrated by the pathos of the occasion, she began with the words, To me the pleasant office has been given of wishing you a happy Christmas, and the sad assembly smiled, murmuring its thanks. What a Christ-like power was that which brought this sun gleam of a smile into that dark tragedy of offence and punishment. Some passages of this address must be given here, to show the attitude in which this truly noble woman confronted the most degraded of her sex. After alluding to the common opinion that women once lost are far worse than abandoned men and cannot be restored, she said, It is not so. I know my sex better. It is because women have had so much feeling and such a rooted respect for purity that they seem so shameless and insolent when they feel that they have erred, and that others think ill of them. When they meet man's look of scorn, the desperate passion that rises is a perverted pride which might have been their guardian angel. Rather let me say, which may be, for the rapid improvement wrought here gives us warm hopes. Margaret exhorts the prisoners not to be impatient for their release. She dwells upon their weakness, the temptations of the outer world, and the helpful character of the influences which are now brought to bear upon them. Oh, be sure that you are fitted to triumph over evil, before you again expose yourselves to it, instead of wasting your time and strength in vain wishes, use this opportunity to prepare yourselves for a better course of life when you are set free. The following sentences are also noteworthy. Let me warn you earnestly against acting insincerely. I know you must prize the good opinion of your friendly protectors, but do not buy it at the cost of truth. Try to be, not to seem. Never despond, never say, it is too late. Fear not, even if you relapse again and again. If you fall, do not lie groveling, but rise upon your feet once more, and struggle bravely on. And if a roused conscience makes you suffer keenly, have patience to bear it. God will not let you suffer more than you need to fit you for his grace. Cultivate this spirit of prayer. I do not mean agitation and excitement, but a deep desire for truth, purity, and goodness. Margaret visited also the prisons on Blackwells Island, and walking through the women's hospital shed the balm of her presence upon the most hardened of its wretched inmates. She had always wished to have a better understanding of the feelings and needs of those women who are trampled in the mud to gratify the brute appetites of men, in order to lend them a helping hand. The following extracts from Letters, hitherto in great part unpublished, will give the reader some idea of Margaret's tender love and care for the dear ones from whom she was now separated. The letters are mostly addressed to her younger brother Richard, and are dated in various epics of the year 1845. One of these recalls her last impressions in Leaving Boston. The last face I saw in Boston was Anna Lawrence, looking after me from Dr. Peabody's steps. Mrs. Peabody stood behind her, some way up, nodding adieu to the darling, as she addressed me, somewhat to my emotion. They seemed like a frosty November afternoon and a soft summer twilight, when night's glorious star begins to shine. When you go to Mrs. Lawrence, will you ask W. Story if he has any of Robert Browning's poems to lend me for a short time? They shall be returned safe. I only want them for a few days to make some extracts for the paper. They cannot be obtained here. The following extracts refer to the first appearance of her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Her brother Eugene had found a notice of it in some remote spot. She writes, It was pleasant you should see that little notice in that wild place. The book is out, and the theme of all the newspapers and many of the journals. Abuse, public and private, is lavished upon its views, but respect is expressed for me personally. But the most speaking fact, and the one which satisfied me, is that the whole edition was sold off in a week to the booksellers, and eighty-five dollars handed to me as my share. Not that my object was in any wise money, but I consider this the signant of success. If one can be heard, that is enough. In August, eighteen-forty-five, she writes thus to Richard. I really loathe my pen at present. It is entirely unnatural to me to keep at it so in the summer. Looking at these dull blacks and whites so much, when nature is in her bright colors, is a source of great physical weariness and irritation. I cannot, therefore, write you good letters, but I'm always glad to get them. As to what you say of my writing books, that cannot be at present. I have not health and energy to do so many things, and find too much that I value in my present position to give it up rashly or suddenly. But doubt not, as I do not, that heaven has good things enough for me to do, and that I shall find them best by not exhausting or overstraining myself. To Richard she writes some months later, I have to-day the unexpected pleasure of receiving from England a neat copy of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, republished there in Clark's Cabinet Library. I had never heard a word about it from England, and am very glad to find it will be read by women there. As to advantage to me, the republication will bring me no money, but will be of use to me here, as our dear country folks look anxiously for verdicts from the other side of the water. I shall get out a second edition before long, I hope, and wish you would translate for me and send those other parts of the story of Panthea that you thought I might like. The extract subjoined will show Margaret's anxious thought concerning her mother's comfort and welfare. It is addressed to the same brother whom she thus admonishes. She speaks of you most affectionately, but happened to mention that you took now no interest in a garden. I have known you would do what you have thought of to be a good son, and not neglect your positive duties, but I have feared you would not show enough of sympathy with her tastes and pursuits. Care of the garden is a way in which you could give her genuine comfort and pleasure, while regular exercise in it would be of great use to yourself. Do not neglect this nor any of the most trifling attention she may wish, because it is not by attending to our friends in our way, but in theirs that we can really avail them. I think of you with much love and pride, and hope for your public and private life. Margaret's Preface to Woman in the Nineteenth Century bears the date of November, 1844. The greater part of the work, as has already been said, had appeared in the dial under a different title, for which she in this place expresses a preference as better suited to the theme she proposes to treat of. Man versus men, woman versus women, means to her the leading idea and ideal of humanity, as wronged and hindered from development by the thoughtless and ignorant action of the race itself. The title finally given was adopted in accordance with the wishes of friends who thought the other wanting in clearness. By man I mean both man and woman. These are the two halves of one thought. I lay no a special stress on the welfare of either. I believe that the development of the one cannot be affected without that of the other. In the name of a common humanity, then, Margaret solicits from her readers a sincere and patient attention, praying women, particularly, to study for themselves the freedom which the law should secure to them. It is this that she seeks, not to be replaced by the largest extension of partial privileges. And may truth, unpolluted by prejudice, vanity, or selfishness, be granted daily more and more as the due inheritance and only valuable conquest for us all. The leading thought formulated by Margaret in the title of her preference is scarcely carried out in her work, at least not with any systematic parallelism. Her study of the position and possibilities of woman is not the less one of unique value and interest. The work shows throughout the grasp and mastery of her mind. Her faith in principles, her reliance upon them in the interpretation of events, make her strong and bold. We do not find in this book one careless expression which would slur over the smallest detail of womanly duty, or absolve from the attainment of any or all of the feminine graces. Of these Margaret deeply knows the value, but in her view these duties will never be noble, these graces sincere, until women stand as firmly as men do upon the ground of individual freedom and legal justice. If principles could be established, particulars would adjust themselves aright. Assertain the true destiny of woman, give her legitimate hopes and a standard within herself. What woman needs is not as a woman to act a rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded. She would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down, every path laid open to woman as freely as to man. And she insists that this inward and outward freedom shall be acknowledged as aright, not yielded as a concession. The limits of our present undertaking do not allow us to give here an extended notice of this work, which has long belonged to general literature, and is perhaps the most widely known of Margaret's writings. We must, however, dwell sufficiently upon its merits to commend it to the men and women of today, as equally interesting to both, and as entirely appropriate to the standpoint of the present time. Nothing that has been written or said in later days has made its teaching superfluous. It demands all that is asked today for women, and that on the broadest and most substantial ground. The usual arguments against the emancipation of women, from a position of political and social inferiority, are all carefully considered and carefully answered. Much study is shown of the prominent women of history, and of the condition of the sex at different periods, much understanding also of the ideal womanhood, which has always had its place in the van of human progress, and of the actual womanhood, which has mostly been bred and trained in an opposite direction. We have then, in the book, a thorough statement, both of the shortcomings of women themselves, and of the wrongs which they in turn suffer from society. The cause of the weak against the strong is advanced with sound and rational argument. We will not say that a thoughtful reader of today will endorse every word of this remarkable treatise. Its fervour here and there runs into vague enthusiasm, and much is asserted about souls and their future which thinkers of the present day do not so confidently assume to know. The extent of Margaret's reading is shown in her command of historical and mythical illustration. Her beloved Greeks furnish her with some portraits of ideal men in relation with ideal women. As becomes a champion she knows the friends and the enemies of the cause which she makes her own. Here, for example, is a fine discrimination. The spiritual tendency is toward the elevation of woman, but the intellectual by itself is not so. Plato sometimes seems penetrated by that high idea of love which considers man and woman as the twofold expression of one thought. But then again, Plato the man of intellect treats woman in the Republic as property, and in the Timaeus says that man, if he misuse the privileges of one life, shall be degraded into the form of a woman. Margaret mentions among the women whom she considered helpers and favourers of the new womanhood, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Jameson, and our own Miss Sedgwick. Among the writers of the other sects, whose theories point to the same end, she speaks of Swedenborg, Fourier, and Goethe. The first name comes to this through his mystical appreciation of spiritual life, the second by his systematic distribution of gifts and opportunities, according to the principles of ideal justice. The world-wise Goethe everywhere recognizes the presence and significance of the feminine principle, and, after treating with tenderness and reverence, its frailest, as well as its finest impersonations, lays the seal of all attraction in the lap of the eternal womanly. Nearer at hand, and in the intimacy of personal intercourse, Margaret found a noble friend to her cause. The late Dr. Channing, whose enlarged and religious nature shared every onward impulse of his time, though his thoughts followed his wishes with a deliberative caution which belonged to his habits and temperament, was greatly interested in these expectations for women. He regarded them as souls, each of which had a destiny of its own, incalculable to other minds, and whose leading it must follow, guided by the light of a private conscience. She tells us that the doctor's delicate and fastidious taste was not shocked by Angelina Grimke's appearance in public, and that he fully endorsed Mrs. Jamison's defense of her sex, in a way from which women usually shrink, because, if they express themselves on such subjects, with sufficient force and clearness to do any good, they are exposed to assaults whose vulgarity makes them painful. Margaret ends her treatise with a synopsis of her humanitarian creed, of which we can hear give only enough to show its general scope and tenor. Here is the substance of it, mostly in her own words. Man is a being of twofold relations, to nature beneath and intelligences above him. The earth is his school, God his object, life and thought his means of attaining it. The growth of man is twofold, masculine and feminine. These terms for Margaret represent other qualities, to wit, energy and harmony, power and beauty, intellect and love. These faculties belong to both sexes, yet the two are distinguished by the preponderance of the opposing characteristics. Were these opposites in perfect harmony, they would respond to and complete each other. Why does this harmony not prevail? Because, as man came before woman, power before beauty, he kept his ascendancy and enslaved her. Woman in turn, rose by her moral power, which a growing civilization recognized. Man became more just and kind, but failed to see that woman was half himself, and that by the laws of their common being he could never reach his true proportions while she remained short of hers. And so it has gone on to our day. Pure love, poetic genius, and true religion have done much to vindicate and to restore the natural harmony. The time has now come when a clearer vision and better action are possible, when man and woman may stand as pillars of one temple, priests of one worship. This hope should attain its ampless fruition in our own country, and will do so if the principles from which sprang our national life are adhered to. Women should now be the best helpers of women. Of men we need only ask the removal of arbitrary barriers. The question naturally suggests itself. What use will woman make of her liberty after so many ages of restraint? Margaret says in answer that this freedom will not be immediately given. But even if it were to come suddenly, she finds in her own sex a reverence for decorums and limits inherited and enhanced from generation to generation, which years of other life could not efface. She believes also that woman as woman is characterized by a native love of proportion, a Greek moderation, which would immediately create a restraining party, and would gradually establish such rules as are needed to guard life without impeding it. This opinion of Margaret's is in direct contradiction to one very generally held today, namely that women tend to more extremes than men do, and are often seen to exaggerate to irrational frenzy the feelings which agitate the male portion of the community. The reason for this, if honestly sought, can easily be found. Women in whom the power of individual judgment has been either left without training or forcibly suppressed will naturally be led by impulse and enthusiasm, and will be almost certain to inflame still further the kindled passions of the men to whom they stand related. Margaret knew this well enough, but she had also known women of a very different type, who had trained and disciplined themselves by the help of that nice sense of measure which belongs to any normal human intelligence, and which in women is easily reached and rendered active. It was upon this best and wisest womanhood that Margaret relied for the standard which should redeem the sex from violence and headlong excitement. Here as elsewhere she shows her faith in the good elements of human nature, and sees them, in her prophetic vision, as already crowned with an enduring victory. I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the do's of mourning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for human destiny have been broken. Yet enough is left to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny. Margaret gives us, as the end of the whole matter, this sentence. Always the soul says to us all, cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual, fervent means to their fulfillment. In this sunny noon of life things new and strange were awaiting Margaret. Her days among kindred and country people were nearly ended. The last volume given by her to the American public was entitled, Papers on Art and Literature. Of these a number had already appeared in print. In her preface she mentioned the essay on American literature as one now published for the first time, and also as a very imperfect sketch, which she hopes to complete by some later utterance. She commends it to us, however, as written with sincere and earnest feelings, and from a mind that cares for nothing but what is permanent and essential. She thinks it should, therefore, have some merit, if only in the power of suggestion. It has for us the greater interest of making known Margaret's opinion of her compiers in literature, and with her appreciation of these, not always just or adequate, her views of the noble national life to which American literature, in its mature growth, should give expression. Margaret says at the outset that some thinkers may accuse her of writing about a thing that does not exist. For, says she, it does not follow, because many books are written by persons born in America, that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts in life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist an original idea must animate this nation, and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores. In reviewing these first sentences we are led to say that they partly commend themselves to our judgment, and partly do not. Here as in much that Margaret has written a solid truth is found side by side with an illusion. The statement that an American idea should lie at the foundation of our national life and its expression is a truth too often lost sight of by those to whom it most imports. On the other hand the great body of the world's literature is like an ocean, in whose waves and tides there is a continuity which sets it not the imposition of definite limits. Literature is, first of all, human. And American books, which express human thought, feeling, and experience, are American literature, even if they show no distinctive national feature. In what follows Margaret confesses that her own studies have been largely of the classics of foreign countries. She has found, she says, a model in the simplest masculine minds of the great Latin authors. She has observed too the features of kindred between the character of the ancient Roman and that of the Britain of today. She remarks upon the reaction which was felt in her time against the revolutionary opposition to the mother country. This reaction she feels may be carried too far. What suits Great Britain, with her insular position and consequent need to concentrate and intensify her life, her limited monarchy and spirit of trade, does not suit a mixed race, continually enriched with new blood, from other stocks the most unlike that of our first descent, with ample field and verge enough to range in and leave every impulse free, an abundant opportunity to develop a genius wide and full as our rivers, luxuriant and impassioned as our vast prairies, rooted in strength as the rocks on which the Puritan fathers landed. It anticipates for this Western hemisphere the rise and development of such a genius, but says that this cannot come until the fusion of races shall be more advanced, nor until this nation shall attain sufficient moral and intellectual dignity to prize moral and intellectual no less highly than political freedom. She finds the earnest of this greater time in the movements already leading to social reforms and in the stern sincerity of elect individuals, but thinks that the influences at work must go deeper before we can have poets. At the time of her writing, 1844 to 1945, she considers literature as in a dim and struggling state, with pecuniary results exceedingly pitiful. The state of things gets worse and worse, as less and less is offered for works demanding great devotion of time and labor, and the publisher, obliged to regard the transaction as a matter of business, demands of the author only what will find an immediate market, for he cannot afford to take anything else. Margaret thinks that matters were better in this respect during the first half-century of our Republican existence. The country was not then so deluged with the dingy page reprinted from Europe, nor did Americans fail to answer sharply the question, who reads an American book? But the books of that period, to which she accords much merit, seem to her so reflected from England in their thought and inspiration that she inclines to call them English rather than American. Having expressed these general views, Margaret proceeds to pass and review the prominent American writers of the time, beginning with the Department of History. In this she accords to Prescott industry, the choice of invaluable material, and the power of clear and elegant arrangement. She finds his books, however, wonderfully tame, and characterized by the absence of thought. In Mr. Bancroft she recognizes a writer of a higher order, possessed of leading thoughts by whose aid he groups his facts. Yet by her own account she has read him less diligently than his brother historian. In ethics and philosophy she mentions, as likely to live and be blessed and honored in the later time, the names of Channing and Emerson. Of the first she says, His leading idea of the dignity of human nature is one of vast results, and the peculiar form in which he advocated it had a great work to do in this new world. On great questions he took middle ground and sought a panoramic view. He was not well acquainted with man on the impulsive and passionate side of his nature, so that his view of character was sometimes narrow, but always noble. Margaret turns from the great divine to her conquered friend as one turns from shade to sunshine. The two men are alike, she says, in dignity of purpose, disinterest, and purity. But of the two she recognizes Mr. Emerson as the profound thinker and man of ideas, dealing with causes rather than effects. His influence appears to her deep, not wide, but constantly extending its circles. He is to her a harbinger of the better day.